


Load Memories

by Raaj



Category: Bravely Default (Video Game) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, a little bit meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7556968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raaj/pseuds/Raaj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiz often knew what to do in strange new situations.  At first, it simply seemed like good instincts.  Then it became clear that it was something more.  And something worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s January the eighth,” Ringabel says, and he rubs a circle over the huddled pile of blankets. “It’s a Friday. We’re landed near Ancheim. Agnès wished to awaken the Wind crystal once more.”  
  
The pile shudders, and Ringabel pauses, trying to pinpoint where his friend has buried himself. Shifts his hand beneath the layers and, finally finding a tuft of unkempt hair, gives Tiz a pat on the head. “The weather is good, and should we awaken the crystal today, I’ve no doubt the returning wind would make for an excellent evening flight.”  
  
Ringabel has years of experience at making reports. It helps him string together observations into a somewhat coherent structure and narrative with only a few moments’ notice, which is good because that’s all the warning Tiz ever gives.  
  
What’s wrong with his friend, he can’t really say, but like most of their adventure, it seems like there were signs he should have noticed sooner. Tiz was the most practical-minded of all of them, and he always knew just what to do for small emergencies or ailments around the campsite or Grandship. They’d gotten into the habit of trusting him when he said “try this”, not questioning the logic of the latest home remedy, because Tiz simply knew best. And on the rare occasion that Tiz had given out orders in battle, they didn’t question the logic of the order, because in the heat of battle there wasn’t time for arguing and because Tiz always knew. Even when they were facing enemies they’d never fought before.  
  
Don’t use magic, he’d say, right as the enemy cast a reflecting spell; equip this shield, he’d say, and then they would be ambushed by fire that was absorbed without any harm. He’d once asked Agnès to resume her practice of white magic just the day before they encountered an enemy who would have wiped them out without it.  
  
A series of little moments that were incredibly suspicious in hindsight. But Tiz had never made a big deal out of it, saying he just “had a feeling”, though once or twice he’d mentioned it was something like deja vu. Ringabel had put it all down to good instincts. Instincts that just so happened to be keeping them alive. One tended not to look gift horses in the mouth.  
  
Except now the horse is biting. That sense of having already seen moments like the present now extended further and further. “We were in Eternia,” comes a whisper from under the blanket. “She wanted to break the Earth crystal. She thought it’d be safest there, because of all the studying that’s been done–she thought they’d know best how to deal with whatever imbalance might be caused.”  
  
“The earth crystal is intact in this world,” Ringabel says, still in a register similar to the one Alternis would have used to report to Braev. “It remains shrouded in darkness, as does the Water crystal.” He’s used to the recitation of facts. He’s used to bringing news from far away.  
  
The difference is that Tiz is the one far away. His body is present, but his mind–his mind. He’d thought he was in Eternia. Ringabel isn’t sure how long Tiz was stuck laboring under that erroneous idea. Half an hour ago, laughing over breakfast, everything had seemed normal. Ten minutes ago, Tiz had managed to ignore the warmth permeating Grandship and had bundled himself in a thick sweater, scarf and hat. He’d been working on more layers when Edea had shouted his name a fourth time, finally getting him to notice that everyone else certainly wasn’t dressing to go out into a year-round winter. Quite the opposite. So when had Tiz gone from being right here with them in Ancheim to being in Eternia? Fifteen minutes ago, twenty? Or had he believed it this whole morning, and the discrepency hadn’t become clear until they were preparing to leave the ship? It was like he was living the present tense of deja vu, already seeing the moments that haven’t happened yet.  
  
The first time he’d done something like this, they’d thought–they’d thought it was some odd joke on Tiz’s part, allowed it to go on for half the night with increasing confusion on all sides until Edea and Tiz were shouting at each other because she was tired of the joke and he thought she was pranking him now with this insistance that it was still October, they were clear in _December_ , and the argument only stopped when Tiz saw how pale Agnès had gone, the vestal staring back at him with tears in her eyes. Ringabel had felt just as distressed as she looked at the dawning realization that the missing punchline wasn’t a quirk of country bumpkin humor.  
  
It had been October 22nd of the fourth world. For a horrifying moment, all four of them had thought Tiz was going mad.  
  
But he’s not, he’s not. Tiz is fine. He has his moments, just as Ringabel has his headaches, but as long as they catch those moments, they can correct him and Ringabel can make a report: date, world, weather, the status of the crystals, their plans for the rest of the day or week or month, whatever Tiz needs to remember where and when they are. Tiz knows he can trust him. The amnesiac would never lie to his friend about something so important. Then they’re good again, no problem whatsoever. He’s not going mad–or if he is, really, it’s just the stress, who _wouldn’t_ go a little mad traveling through world after world? He’ll be fine once this stops. They’re near the end.  
  
Tiz will be okay. Ringabel’s the only one allowed to go mad here.


	2. Airy's Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't planned at first, but was written after an anon on tumblr asked me what Airy thought of the situation with Tiz. She has thoughts on it, buuut they don't make a difference to her plan in the long run.

Airy and Tiz are friends.  Good friends.  They’ve gone through tens of thousands of worlds together, you know.  She knows what he’s like.  She knows him.  And she certainly knows he doesn’t have a “beautiful soul” or anything that would cause Mephilia to spare him a second non-murderous glance.

 

Granted, Mephilia’s not really all there with them.  The lady likes to take mental vacations to the other realms she can see into, so she’s hardly the best source for details.  But a second soul?  That’s a little too outlandish for her to have simply imagined.  No.  Mephilia had still been an effective fighter in this world, no matter her other flaws.  She had still been on top of her game as someone with an insight beyond the boundaries of Luxendarc.

 

And Tiz has had more than one soul before.

 

Plus, he  _knows_  things.  This is a lucky group–which isn’t the issue by itself.  If you wend your way through tens of thousands of worlds, you inevitably encounter a couple thousand scenarios where no one dies or loses a limb or is blinded long enough for the magic to be seared into their eyes.  Not until the very end, anyway.  Tiz has even usually been the one contributing to their luck: the boy likes to be well-prepared, which, trite as it sounded, really is the best luck.  (The truth always turned trite.  Lies, with their infinite variations, are much more entertaining.)

 

But there are things a bumpkin would never in tens of thousands of worlds know to prepare for beforehand, would have to be rescued from by sheer _dumb_  luck or the aberration that called itself Ringabel or even by Airy herself, if it turned into enough of a mess that she thought her vestal might die.

 

This Tiz still has a few moments of sheer dumb luck.  But Ringabel has only had to pull a last-minute trick out of his amnesiac ass once, and really, Edea could have piloted the _Eschalot_  too, if she’d felt enough pressure to try, and Airy hasn’t had to intervene, which is a good thing, because Airy  _really, really_  hates having to intervene, and she always made sure everyone else hated it too.  Instead, Tiz just…knew.  That they needed the white mage’s dispel to get rid of that regenerating potion Qada had concocted.  That they should stock up on plenty of remedies to cure confusion before they even started trying to trail the red mage they had yet to learn was bamboozling scores of women with pheromones.

 

The obvious answer is that this Tiz has some manner of foresight others did not.  But here’s the rub: Tiz is trite, because Tiz is truthful.  And Tiz tells Airy (Tiz actually tells Agnès, but that just means Airy is even more sure he is being Trite and Truthful) that he doesn’t know why he’s making such a request, he simply feels like it is Important and so if Agnès Please, Please Would?  Just so he felt better and of course Agnès does it, because she likes that boy even if she’s too sheltered to realize quite yet how much, and Airy wishes she could puke up bits of dark magic in both their pockets, they’re so gross with their soft feelings.  But besides being nauseating, their interaction tells Airy that whatever is going on with Tiz isn’t something he understands, doesn’t come from himself.

 

So.  A second soul, huh?  Airy can believe it, except Tiz is still acting like his ordinary self.  Nice, polite, boring.

 

Toward the end of the world marked on her wings as ‘5′, the Sage appears before them again.  This is pretty standard.  Airy knows how his eyes tend to linger, longest on his Angel, only briefly glancing to Tiz and Edea, with a wry look at Ringabel if he’s there.  It had taken Airy a few dozen worlds to realize why he never looked at her, partially because the old fart tended to keep his knowledge under wraps and partially because she doesn’t care that much about old farts as long as they’re staying out of her way.  But the Sage can see beyond boundaries too.  In this world, Airy watches him.

 

He stares at Tiz.  He stared the first time, too.  None of the others present would call it staring, because it only lasts for five, seven seconds at most each time, but he looks at Tiz twice as much as he looks at Edea and Airy knows which one of them has breasts, at least in this version of Luxendarc.

 

Second soul it is, then.  Tiz is being led by something he doesn’t understand, just like Agnès is being led by her. Now, again, this isn’t a new situation to Airy.  Tiz, being from Norende, Doomed Bumpkin Village, has a fair chance of ending up a fresh and relatively intact, unburied corpse near a nexus of dimensions slowly being bound together.  Airy can’t blame wandering spirits and demons for taking advantage of such an obvious opportunity.  She just makes sure to torture and punish them while they’re still in _her_  puppet.

 

It’s a fair chance, but not a big one:  it’s happened somewhere around a hundred times.  His corpse has been possessed by, among various entities, another freshly murdered version of himself, a freshly murdered version of Edea, Alternis, a few demons who hadn’t had the sense to follow Lord Ouroboros’ orders, and on one memorable occasion, the entire accumulated despair and grief of a thousand Doomed Bumpkin Villages.

 

(They really couldn’t blame her for the fact that they’d chosen such a poor place to build.)

 

But possessions tend to be way more conspicuous than this.  When Tiz was possessed, he usually couldn’t get off Caldisla before his behavior proved too erratic to avoid suspicion, whether it was that he’d tried to kill her at first sight or that he was having debilitating visions of death or that he was having visions of death and found them absolutely delightful.  (It was sad how few demons possessed a sense of subtlety.   _Really_.  She’d had to lie low for millennia, and they couldn’t keep their sadism under wraps for four weeks?  Pathetic.)

 

So now she’s arrived at the conclusion that he’s possessed, and that this is a possession that’s unexpectedly…benevolent.  Smooth.  The spirit certainly isn’t of the Infernal realm: he’d have tried to murder someone by now, they really just can’t keep their impulses under control.  The spirit isn’t of Luxendarc, this one or another: the possession would be more erratic.  His behavior is consistent.  His nightmares are all his.  That leaves only one realm.

 

The Celestials are like gods.  A Celestial would be able to influence someone with only the minimum of real interference.  That’s how Tiz has a second soul and still acts like his boring old self.  That explains it.

 

… _The Celestial is helping Lord Ouroboros accomplish His goal._   It’s such a delightful thought, Airy cracks up laughing when it occurs to her and has to make up a fib to Agnès about what foolishness Ringabel has been involved in today.  (It’s a safe lie.  He’s always involved in _some_  sort of foolishness.)

 

But it’s sobering, too, because it makes her task much more dangerous.  Tiz’s foresight means he’ll eventually see the end, try to fight against it.  …So Airy will lead this group all the way to the end.  All the way.  Even if the Celestial should find a way to fight against _her_ , Lord Ouroboros’ might shall surely prove overwhelming for its vessel.  It can try and try as many times as it wants, but it’ll eventually have to give in.  The Celestial might be a god.  Its instrument is still just a human boy that should have died months ago.

 

She’s already decided this by the time the possession starts to wear on Tiz’s mind, his memories slipping and turning confused.  She acts surprised, because that’s what everyone expects.  Really, she’s just surprised it took this long.  It’s a little sad from a human perspective, she guesses, because Agnès sure gets upset enough about it, but Tiz has always been, throughout millions of years, in tens of thousands of worlds, a tool that can be broken and discarded.

 

(At the end, she’s a little resentful that the Celestial, with all its foresight, didn’t see fit to tell her that she was the same.)


End file.
